


Wetwork (1987)

by GRAYXOF



Series: 『 WETWORK 』 [3]
Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Explicit Language, F/M, Gunplay, Oral Sex, Parasites, implied vkaz/vquiet, never try to take down a gunship from the front
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-14
Updated: 2017-02-14
Packaged: 2018-09-23 22:24:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9682943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GRAYXOF/pseuds/GRAYXOF
Summary: “…Not everyone can die for the Boss and come back."Oh, sothat’swhat’s gotten under his skin. How many times has it been, anyway?





	

The recovery ward on Medical Platform I is clean, maybe not exactly to standard health code but better than some of the tents and trucks Quiet’s been cut apart and stitched up in. Offers a hell of a lot more peace and privacy, too. The window’s jammed all the way open and a cool mist is rolling in off the ocean along with the first sliver of sunrise, sinks into her skin, sets her parasites off like an electric current in her blood. It’s keeping her awake, on edge. Clocking in to her sixth consecutive day of bed rest isn’t helping.

Apparently even _the one that covers_ needs time to bring her back from a lacerated spinal column.

She’d been caught in strafing fire from a gunship patrolling out in Sossusvlei, almost cut in _half._ Bad call on her part, really, trying to shoot it down from the front. V had to call a team away from escort detail in Mariental to run cleanup while he held her guts in onboard the extraction chopper, the op _still_ blew up and then for _some_ reason their contact in the Namibian government refused to wire the second half of the payment he’d promised them. Pretty fucking unprofessional, in her opinion, because they’d technically cleared their objective– but then, she’s the one with staples from her ass to her breastbone and an incident report to write for Commander Miller, so maybe judgement calls on professional conduct are outside her purview–

Incident report. Commander Miller.

_Fuck._

Quiet groans, pulls a yellow legal pad from under the tapes stacked on the trolley next to her bed. She taps the paper a few times with a ballpoint before stabbing it straight through the cardboard backing, pitches the whole mess across the room into the EKG monitor like a boomerang.She’s never been good with words, a slight character flaw that knowing six languages has never once helped with. She’s never liked paperwork, either. Now that she can’t run her mouth her personality’s improved, if you think patience is a virtue, but she’s still shit at reports. Shit at coming up with a version of events Miller will find useful, one that won’t be completely fucking _embarrassing._ No facts, just interpretations, right?

Maybe. That said, she hasn’t fucked up like this since Cyprus ’84 and hasn’t been this _pissed_ since then either, and that’s what she’s gonna have to write in her report.

What _really_ pisses her off is that Miller will be fucking insufferable about it and: he’ll be _right._

 _We can’t trust her, Boss. She’s out of control–it’s like having a fucking_ nuke _walking around base. And I know I’m not the only one who– everyone knows you’re–_

_Kaz._

Venom Snake’s voice eases the tension in her shoulders, spreads her hands out over the sheets, even if it’s all in her head right now. Quiet closes her eyes against the brightening sky and traces down the furrow of fresh soft scar tissue and metal in her skin, brings herself back to the desert, to V’s hands slipping into her, to how her entrails shone sapphire blue against the red sand– and if her hand ends up between her legs, that’s fine, anything to stop from spiraling down into self-pity. Miller’s gonna chew her out no matter what, no reason she has to do his job for him.

 

**°**

 

She wakes up facedown, cold, half-suffocated because someone’s tucked the sheet over her.

It’s a fifty-fifty chance that this was well-intentioned– three years with the Diamond Dogs and _some_ of them are still afraid of her. As they should be, if they want to pull shit like this. Quiet kicks off the sheet, swallows down bile as a wave of vertigo crashes over her, holds her head in her hands until the room stops spinning. Whoever covered her also took the liberty of shutting the window. Outside the sky is dark– a storm’s kicked up while she was out and rain’s pounding against the bulletproof glass, so loud that it’s almost drowning out the voices carrying from the ward down the hall.

“–told you a thousand times, damn it, I don’t need–“

It’s Commander Miller.

“With respect, sir. Compensation for musculoskeletal imbalances can cause permanent damage– we’re talking osteoarthritis, osteoporosis, on top of the chronic pain you already–“

“Yeah, _you’ve_ told _me._ A thousand times.”

“If you would just– consider a bionic, at least for your leg–“

“No.”

“But–“

“I’m here for some fucking tranquilizers, soldier, not an intervention. C’mon.”

“Sir, I… look. I can make you an appointment with Kinkajou. He’s back from Iran on the eleventh. In the meantime…”

The conversation fades and Quiet zones out, stretches her arm up towards the ceiling, flexes her hand experimentally, pulls her finger on an invisible trigger. There’s a low throb of pain radiating from her shoulder but that’s _nothing_ , acceptable, a definite improvement from last week. She phases her arm out of sight, rematerializes it over and over, watches her muscles and parasites weave together, pink struck through with sparks bright as diamonds. Code Talker used to say the parasites were symbiotic but at this point it’s more like they’re one unkillable tenacious fucked up _thing_. She’s not sure what’s left of the body she was born with, if there’s anything left at all. If it even matters.

“You really got the luck of the draw.”

Quiet starts, fingers already in a fist by the time they’re flesh and bone again– no way to greet Mother Base’s XO, who’s standing in the doorway watching her through his stupid sunglasses like she’s not naked and he’s not her commanding officer.

She flips him off.

Miller grins and shuts the door behind him. “I mean it. Fossa just signed me up to get another inch of my leg sawed off. Properly, this time, so he says.” He grinds his crutch into the linoleum for emphasis as he sits on the edge of her bed, leans back to face her. “Phantom pain’s supposed to fade after six months, did you know that?”

Quiet folds her arms over her chest, not because she wants to cover herself but because if he has a point, he’d better fucking get to it, or–

“Less for you, I bet. It’s been, what, six days since Sossusvlei? You look great–“

She snorts.

“–for a goddamn jackass who got herself _filleted_ and compromised an operation. You’re a real piece of work, and if it was up to Buffalo she’d have you shipped out to Okhotsk on the graveyard security shift before letting you run another mission with the Boss.”

Okhotsk is Forward Operating Base 2 and their primary nuclear disarmament facility. Nothing happens at Okhotsk and she’d freeze to death in a week. Quiet runs her tongue over her teeth, stares Miller down because they both know Buffalo has no say in her assignment, even as the head of the combat division. He’s full of shit.

“It goes without saying Snake wants you back in the field as soon as you’re done here,” Miller says, and she uncrosses her arms, sits up a little in spite of herself. “I…”

Here it comes. Not Okhotsk, but she’s definitely gonna be grounded for the next month, on top of getting thrown into corrective training _again–_

“I’ve already signed off on it.”

Quiet’s mind goes blank and she must have a hell of an expression on her face because Miller rolls his eyes. “Oh, fuck off. How stupid d’you think I am?” He reaches past her, picks up one of her cassettes– it’s the one Pequod dropped off the first day she’d been able to stay conscious for more than a few seconds at a time. A real copy of _Two Tribes,_ not some shitty Russian bootleg, still has the cover and everything. “Don’t answer that,” he adds. There’s a flush burning down his neck and he’s suddenly very interested in Frankie Goes To Hollywood but _she’s_ not interested in letting him slip the line here. Quiet grabs his jaw, forces him to look at her.

Miller tries to pull away but she won’t let go, digs her nails into his perpetual five o’clock shadow, hooks her index finger over his teeth.

“––z,” she says, makes sure the syllable is soft enough that only the hiss of the Z is audible but oh, he hears it alright, she can feel his pulse racing under her palm. He’s frozen like a predator in a snare trap waiting to chew off its own paw. He swallows.

“…Not everyone can die for the Boss and come back.”

Oh, so _that’s_ what’s gotten under his skin. How many times has it been, anyway? Did the chlorine tank fiasco count? She’d been out of commission for a few days, Fossa and Lynx tried to hook her up to a ventilator and she’d scared the shit out of everyone by pulling the tubes out herself. Lamar Khaate was a definite [KIA](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7962934). She’s hit some rough patches since then but nothing anywhere near this bad.

Third time’s the charm, then.

Miller puts her tape down and folds his aviators next to it, carefully avoids touching the lenses. His eyes are clouded, milky. He’s searching for something in her expression that he can’t seem to find, and hell if she knows what it is, what he wants from her. She used to think she was good with men, perceptive, always one step ahead, but maybe that was the tequila and the way everyone in the XOF strike force liked to pretend they weren’t actually human.

Miller wears his heart on his empty sleeve and that was a lot easier to deal with back in 1984. Now she doesn’t know what to do with him and her main consolation is that the learning curve is just as steep for Venom Snake, if the split conversations she overhears in the ACC are anything to go by. V’s advantage (if you can call it that) is the conditioning, the half-decade’s worth of false memories of a relationship that, as far as she cares to guess, was one part Stockholm Syndrome and two parts economic opportunism.

Quiet’s advantage is that, according to the MSF vets, Miller was a real wild card himself back in the seventies, and: now she’s gone and _impressed_ him. By being an absolute idiot. Fucking unreal.

Miller– okay, _Kaz–_ bites down on her knuckle, leans in and presses his gloved hand over her wound where it crosses her abdomen, spreads his fingers like he’s trying to push her open. The scar tissue is soft, shines like silk, but it’s healed well enough that it doesn’t break even when he digs his thumb into the split between the staples and sets off a full-body shiver.

“In love with the legend, huh?” he mutters, and it’s _so_ self-deprecating that Quiet laughs harshly, shoves him to the floor. He falls knees-first, groans at the crack of bone on linoleum.

God, he’s such a fucking _romantic._

She hooks a knee over Kaz’s shoulder, doesn’t make a sound when he puts his face between her legs,just knots her fingers in his hair so he can’t pull back when his tongue slips into her, _through_ her. His mouth tastes disgusting, like death, like vomit and stale coffee and, ah, _Venom Snake,_ but his teeth are sharp and cool on her skin. Kaz whimpers when she bucks against him, breathes deep and ragged and she catches herself mirroring him, chest heaving even though she can’t _inhale_ , arching off the sheets because _shit_ , he’s _good_ at this _,_ sloppy, close to starving, all instinct. She feels fucking _alive,_ and–

–his fingers catch on two of the staples in her scar and she moans, eyes shut, lets him rip them out entirely. Quiet comes too fast with his tongue on her clit and the iron taste of blood thick on her skin, pulsing and _hollow_ and sticky with the strange gray residue the parasites produce instead of sweat. When she yanks his head up Kaz looks like _he’s_ the one who got tripped up by a machine gun, blushed and panting, chin smeared with blood, spit, and everything else. The stain around his eyes is pitch black and she knows she’s in the same state because her vision’s turned to fractals that slice the world into panes of glass, clear as crystal.

“Ha,” Kaz extricates his fingers from her latest injury, swallows when he sees they’re soaked with gore. “Holy _fuck–“_

Quiet takes his hand in hers, gets his glove between her teeth and tugs it off with a jerk of her head. She drags him up by the collar– split in two and she’s still so much stronger than him. One arm is all she needs to shove him into the thin mattress. Kaz reaches back, hangs on to the bed frame as she straddles him, keeps himself out of the way while she folds his overcoat open and draws his Geist P3 from his shoulder holster, slowly, deliberately. His cock twitches under her as she brings the gun to her mouth, pushes her tongue around the trigger, over the slide stop. By the time she closes her lips around the barrel he’s transfixed, eyes wide and white, lids fluttering.

“You don’t know where that’s been,” he says lightly. Quiet shrugs one shoulder. Then she fucking pistol whips him with _just_ enough force to pull a broken moan from his throat, to burst the flesh on his cheek so she can lick the wound clean and kiss him with his blood in her mouth. She presses the muzzle of his gun into the soft underside of his jaw and he moans again when she clicks the safety off, thrusts against her, hard and throbbing with only a few layers of rough wet poly-nylon between them.

Gross violations of firearms safety aren’t usually her thing, but then, this is only as dangerous as _she_ is. Kaz is far from helpless– she’s seen him wipe the floor with new recruits in basic training– but keeping both arms behind her back _still_ wouldn’t make it a fair fight.

“We don’t– draw guns on comrades, remember.” Kaz flashes her a grin through a strangled cough as she rolls her hips, rests the barrel in the hollow of his neck. That draws a real laugh from her and she hums. Tilts her head.

_Is that what we are now?_

“Christ,” he groans– still grinning, but now he won’t look at her– “Shut the fuck up.”

Quiet arches an eyebrow, gives him a few seconds to think about the idiocy of _that_ particular statement before she dismantles the gun neatly with one hand. He shivers as the components hit the floor. Spreads his legs for her, like she’s gonna fuck him, just _asking_ for it like that–

Well, protocol went out the window as soon as he put his mouth on her cunt, pride and dignity are fucking dead and so is any semblance of control either of them ever had over the situation, so, what the _hell–_ Quiet kisses him again, crushes his throat with her forearm to keep him down and undoes his belt with her free hand. His cock is hot and slick in her palm, dark red, swollen. Kaz sinks his teeth into her shoulder, exhales with a low moan as she circles him with her thumb and forefinger then reconsiders, abandons technique altogether to jerk him off until he’s shaking, gasping for air, choking back expletives and names that definitely aren’t hers. She’s _killed_ men with more finesse than this and yet here he is, falling apart at the seams over a shitty handjob.

“Q- ui- uiet–“

“Hm?”

“ _Please–“_

She wasn’t really waiting for him to beg for it, but if he’s going to be such a little _bitch–_

Quiet closes her fingers like a vice, twists _hard_ and Kaz swallows a whine, throws his head back. “Please– fuck just fucking _fuck_ m–“

–sure, okay, fine. She shifts so she’s at _just_ the right angle to let him thrust into her and God, his cock feels _good_ , thick and full and searing. Kaz goes stubbornly quiet, can barely keep his eyes open as he watches her ride him, fixed on where he’s flush with her. His breath hitches when she grinds against him, pushes him further. Deeper. Every jolt ripples through her skin in waves and she clenches her teeth, braces through it when he comes.

It’s only when she straightens her back and slides off him that Quiet realizes she’s half _gone_ , all raw muscle and sinew and parasites blurred out by mist and haze. Kaz is tracing along the bare tendons of her forearm. It doesn’t hurt but it sets off a rush in her, like he’s touching live wire, and the sensation intensifies as his fingers work into the fine white bones of her hand.Quiet phases back together, touches the knotted scar where his arm ends just below the shoulder. Their mouths are too close, open and breathless, wet and bloody and inflamed.

Kaz swallows past the bruises darkening his throat. “You’re unbelievable.” His voice sounds almost as bad as hers. “Freak.”

She grins, wide and wolfish–  _it takes one to know one–_ and rolls off him, leaves him to zip himself up while she deals with the window. The glass is fogged over, streaked with their sweat, and the breeze that hits her as she opens it is sharp with brine and engine exhaust, mixes unpleasantly with the bitter flavor of semen between her legs. The rain’s stopped and the sun has long since sunk below the horizon. Quiet leans over the sill, idly counts the seconds as Kaz reassembles his gun one-handed behind her. The magazine clicks into place at nineteen.

“It’s after eight,” Kaz says. He’s got his sunglasses back on in spite of this and they do nothing to hide how thoroughly _fucked_ he looks, fully dressed as he is in a uniform that’s soaked through with sweat, blood, come. He’s wiped his face on his sleeve and it’s only made everything worse.“I’ll have Fossa in here to, uh–“

Quiet scoffs, pries out a staple from under her breast and flicks it at him.

“Right. I’ll make sure you’re cleared for duty tomorrow.” Kaz pulls himself to his feet. “ _If–“_

Shit.

“–you have that report on my desk by 05:00.”

 

**°**

 

At 05:00 she’s showered, dressed, outside Kaz’s office with her report in hand. She’s more tired than she wants to be, especially after sleeping through yesterday, more stiff and sore than she’s accustomed to but it beats paraplegia and it beats another week of bed rest. Quiet bypasses the key card lock and phases straight through the door– she shouldn’t be pushing her luck with protocol, but fuck it.

Three years on Mother Base and she’s never been in here before. The office is dark, stuffy, and in an _impeccable_ state of organized chaos– there’s a clear method to the madness of paperwork spread out over the desk. Personnel reports, blueprints from R&D, contracts from NGOs and rebel militias and at least one from the fucking _UN,_ an empty coffee mug, the trademark aviators folded neatly over a stack of spreadsheets. The desk is mirrored where she can see it through the sea of paper, reflecting shards of pink dawn and throwing them around the room like an executive disco ball. Unexpected, but unsurprising.

Quiet expected photographs, pinned up on the walls the way V keeps everything taped to every surface of the ACC, but there aren’t any. Nothing in the room at all that isn’t strictly business, except for her and–

Kaz is dead asleep and using his arm as a pillow. He’s washed his face, if not his hair, and he’s stripped down to a sweat-stained t-shirt, though someone’s already been in to fix his coat over his shoulders. From the taste of smoke hanging in the air– V. Of course it was. There’s a thin line of spit leaking from the corner of Kaz’s mouth. It’s hard to tell if the black rimming his eyes is from his parasites or plain exhaustion.

Most of his bruises are from her.

Quiet snaps her clipboard down in a nest of balance sheets and Kaz nearly falls out of his chair, catches himself just in time. “Jesus _Christ_ , Ocelo–“ Catches himself again when he finishes rubbing the grit from his eyes and sees who’s responsible for his brush with cardiac arrest. “Oh. It’s you.”

In response she hauls herself onto the desk, draws one leg up, pretends not to notice that she’s tracking blood-caked Namibian sand over a file folder labeled _1985._ Pushes her report towards him. A few stray papers flutter to the floor.

“Great,” he says, flatly. “Dismissed.”

He’s very carefully maintaining eye contact, so she stays right where she is.

“We–“ Kaz reaches for his aviators. Starts fidgeting with them, instead of putting them on. It would be endearing, if it wasn’t fucking annoying– Quiet plucks the shades from his hand and folds them over his shirt collar. “There’s nothing to discuss,” he mutters, swats her hand away.

She swats back. She _knows_.

She certainly doesn’t have anything to say about it.

“It’s fine by me if you wanna play Russian Roulette with your life on your own time–”

Yeah, she knows that, too. Quiet leans across the desk, twists her fingers in his hair and pushes his head back, swings her legs around so her boots are planted firmly on his knees.

“–but he’s… who knows if you give a shit, but Sn… the Boss…” Kaz looks slightly nauseated and Quiet sighs, gives him an easy way out by pressing the sole of her boot into his crotch, just hard enough that he shudders and rests his forehead on her hand.Brushes his fingers down the fading scar that still bisects her stomach. “Fuck.”

“I,” he takes a deep breath, continues, “am preaching to the choir, huh?”

He’s finally figured it out. Quiet lets him go, slowly, drags her palm over his face, through his stubble until he’s panting a little and she’s holding empty air. Kaz licks his teeth, nods.

There’s a pause as he shifts and she very deliberately keeps her foot on his cock.

“Ha,” he pats her thigh. She’s seen V do the same thing to him, to say nothing of DD– who, exactly, does Kaz think he is? “C’mon, lighten up. _Choir?_ ” He’s grinning and, yeah, it’s a little infectious. She smirks. Grinds her heel down for good measure.

He moans.

“Yeah. Okay. You’re right. That was– ah,” Kaz relents, leans back in his chair. He’s flushed down to his neck, sweating, still trying to act like he’s got the upper hand, here. “You know– I’ve got work to do, so if you wanna _fuck off_ –”

She takes a second to think about it, shrugs the jacket from her shoulders so she can breathe easier and definitely not so he gets a decent view of her chest. Quiet slides off the desk, twists his arm around so the joint creaks in its socket when he half-heartedly tries to push her back, stands over him. Her hair is still wet from the shower, plastered to her neck and dripping all over his shoulders.

“Hm.”

It catches him off guard, to hear her. “…What is it you’re waiting for?” Kaz’s voice has gone soft, caustic. “What do you want me to say? ‘Cause I– you’re free to go, soldier–“ She bites his lip. It’s not a kiss, not one that either of them would inflict on anyone else, anyway. He tries to keep talking, at first, and Quiet makes no effort to follow when he breaks it off. Blood pools between their teeth, under their tongues. Kaz swallows, she spits it back into his mouth.

He’s right: there’s nothing he can say that she doesn’t already know.

 

**°**

 

 


End file.
